Android: keep blue background after ListView selection

Question

I have a ListView, and it works great on a phone. Now I am making a tablet UI, with the ListView on the left and details on the right.

When I touch an item, it flashes blue as long as it is pressed. I want to keep that blue color until another item is selected, just like the Gmail app on the Nexus 7.

What is the cleanest way to achieve that? I'd rather avoid setting backgrounds manually, I assume there is a way to mark an element as the "active" one and theme it accordingly.

You can see this link may helpful:http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5682053/listview-item-wont-stay-selected — Helal Khan, Sep 12 '12 at 10:51
You can set background color of the view of listview item on the click of listview item. — Rushabh Patel, Sep 12 '12 at 10:51

score 18 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:33

What is the cleanest way to achieve that?

What you are looking for is known as the "activated" state. To make this work:

Step #1: In res/values-v11/, have a style resource that implements activated. For example, for a new project that has the AppTheme declaration defined there, go with something like:

<resources>

    <style name="AppTheme" parent="android:Theme.Holo.Light"></style>

    <style name="activated" parent="AppTheme">
        <item name="android:background">?android:attr/activatedBackgroundIndicator</item>
    </style>

</resources>

Step #2: Define the same style in res/values/ for any older devices, just as a stub style resource, so references to it continue to work:

<resources>

    <style name="AppTheme" parent="android:Theme.Light"/>

    <style name="activated" parent="AppTheme"/>

</resources>

Step #3: In your layout XML resource for the row in the ListView, add style="@style/activated" to the list of attributes of the root element

Step #4: Set the ListView to be a single-choice list, such as the following line in a ListFragment:

getListView().setChoiceMode(ListView.CHOICE_MODE_SINGLE);

You can see this in action in this sample project, this sample project, and this sample project. For more background on those first two samples, see this SO question: Complete Working Sample of the Gmail Three-Fragment Animation Scenario?

It works great, and it's indeed much better than keep changing the background programmatically. Thank you very much! — erwan, Sep 12 '12 at 11:56

score 4 · Answer 2 · edited Aug 19 '14 at 05:09

4

Using

android.R.layout.simple_list_item_activated_1

instead of

R.layout.simple_list_item_checkable_1.

Just for somebody checking someday.

edited Aug 19 '14 at 05:09

Martin Konecny

57,827
19
139
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answered Nov 27 '12 at 04:18

SteveX

41
1

Mehdi Fanai · Answer 3 · 2013-07-01T08:55:10.317

after days of search and pulling my hair i just found out that activatedBackgroundIndicator is also available in ActionBarSherlock styling system. Most of the devs which develop backwards compatible apps, use ActionBarSherlock,so using ActionBarSherlock is a good option for most cases. So instead of using android:background="?android:attr/activatedBackgroundIndicator" which will give errors in android versions prior to 11, just use: android:background="?activatedBackgroundIndicator"

here is the example row layout xml code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
   //note the activatedBackgroundIndicator
android:background="?activatedBackgroundIndicator"
android:minHeight="?android:attr/listPreferredItemHeight"
android:paddingBottom="2dip"
android:paddingTop="2dip" >

<TextView
    android:id="@+id/text1"
    android:layout_width="wrap_content"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:gravity="center_vertical"
    android:minHeight="?android:attr/listPreferredItemHeight"
    android:paddingLeft="6dip"
    android:paddingRight="6dip"
    android:textSize="15sp" />

<TextView
    android:id="@+id/text2"
    android:layout_width="wrap_content"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:gravity="center_vertical"
    android:minHeight="?android:attr/listPreferredItemHeight"
    android:paddingRight="5dip"
    android:textSize="20dip" />
  </LinearLayout>

`So instead of using android:background="?activatedBackgroundIndicator" which will give errors in android versions prior to 11, just use: android:background="?activatedBackgroundIndicator"` What? Can you please explain this? — kuchi, Jun 29 '13 at 19:21

Android: keep blue background after ListView selection

3 Answers3